The Rats (novel)

the Rats ( Rats in Original version) is a Romance British of James Herbert published in 1974. It is about the first novel of its author.

Synopsis

A young professor of London drawing sees his city invades by hordes of larger, wilder mutant rats and especially more intelligent than the other rats. The outdatedness of the poor districts, the ruins of buildings destroyed during the Second world war and especially the apathy of the politicians in place return his combat and that of his/her companions against the monsters man-eaters even more difficult.

History

First attacks

When one of its pupils, Keogh, arrives late after being made bite by a rat, Harris, professor of drawing in a poor district of London decides to take it along itself to the hospital. When he learns the following day that Keogh died in the night of the continuations of the bite, he is astonished that such a benign wound could cause the death. If the doctors are also skeptic, it is about the disease itself: if the Leptospirosis, or disease of Weil, can cause death, the incubation period is much longer and easily guérissable using antibiotic. Knowing the places, he sees himself proposing by Foskins, of the ministry for the Public health, to lead an employee of the rat extermination to the place where the child said to be bitten. Attacked, it succeeds in saving its life, but the employee as some other people do not have this chance. Following its attacks, the media recall misery reigning in these districts and the dangerous presence of ruins of the second world war, the policies begin to cure all that and the majority of the Londoners live in fear.

First large attacks

Time passes, it does not have there more attacks and the black rats seem to have disappeared, people forgot with the profit of a fresher topicality. But nothing changed: the districts pauper remained it and were not rehabilitated. And the attacks start again. Initially a subway station then, on the same line, a train crammed, decree and ignited because of the short-circuits created by the rats nibbling the cables. It is then the school where works Harris to be attacked, but thanks to the coolness and to the courage of the young professor, the children leave themselves there healthy and except, only the caretaker and the principal are killed, respectively devoured and contaminated by the rats. Other attacks take place a little everywhere in London during this day that its inhabitants call " Monday noir". Following the attack, the government decides to strike extremely: contaminated pups are used as soft food poisoned for the rats. Once those poisoned, they turn over in the sewers where they contaminate their congeneric. Fodkins, officially dislocated its functions following the attacks, takes care of the operations and request once again the assistance of Harris which, knowing the places better than people can say where to place the soft foods to trap the maximum of rats

The final attack

Once again, the giant rats seem to be beaten, their corpses strew the streets, the official ones autocongratulent themselves. And during this time, a cinema and a zoo are attacked. London is evacuated, the army patrols with the order to cut down the plunderers. The last hope, an idea proposed by Harris, consists in attracting the rats thanks to Ultrason S to be able the gazer then. But Harris and Foskins know well that is not sufficient. When this last discovers the place where all started, it decides to go there, only, thus hoping to repurchase itself with the eyes of the opinion. When Harris arrives in its turn on the spot, it there discovers the corpse with half devoured of Foskins as well as rats, larger still and apparently less constrained than their congeneric by the ultrasounds. And in a corner, incompetent to be driven, a rat even larger, Bicephalous and Albino: the queen. Dripped and mad, it kills it, being baited above until destroying the corpse.

End?

The rats all are died, the ultrasounds were emitted without stopping of the days lasting to attract all the rats and London takes again its normal life. But in the cellar of small shopkeepers, locked up, returned to insane half by the ultrasounds, a female survived with its small, of which a bicephalous albino who seems to reign on his brothers and sisters.

Adaptation

Film adaptation

1982 : Deadly Eyes .

Adaptation in video games

1985 : adaptation in Video game for the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum.

Continuations

This novel was followed of two novels and a graphic novel

1979: the den of the Rats (“Lair”)
1984: empire of the Rats (“Domain”)
1993: The City , a Romance graph

Sources

“Rats”, translation of the novel by Jacqueline Huet, published by Pocket

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